and fresh differences were discussed; but these
conversations were but incidents in the day's doings. From private
conversation politics were banished.

At the end of the honeymoon Mr and Mrs Hereward Lowther returned to
town and took up their abode in a small flat in Westminster. The choice
was made by Lilith, as indeed was every choice in those days of
Lowther's weakness. She confessed to an affection for Westminster, for
the quaint, old-fashioned nooks and corners which still remain, tucked
behind the busy thoroughfares; for the picturesque precincts of the
Abbey. Westminster was at once central, convenient, and old-world. She
was eloquent on the subject of its advantages as a dwelling-place, but
she never alluded to the vicinity of Saint Stephen's.

After his return to town Lowther passed through a somewhat severe
relapse. Pace to face with the old conditions he grew nervous and
despondent, and had more frequent recourse to his drug, but there was
this great difference between his present condition and the past, that
whereas he had been indifferent, now he was penitent, remorseful,
utterly ashamed. Lilith never reproached him for his lapses, she nursed
him assiduously through the subsequent weakness; she checked him when he
would have made faltering apologies.

"We won't talk about it. It is not worth while. It will pass!" she
said quietly, and as she spoke, her strange, expressionless eyes gazed
into his, and he found himself murmuring in agreement. "Yes, it will
pass!" Never once, so far as he could discover, did any doubt
concerning the future enter his wife's head. She must certainly have
heard that when a man takes to drugs it is almost a miracle if he is
enabled to break the habit, yet her confidence remained unshaken.
Throughout the darkest day, throughout the bitterest disappointment, she
remained serenely unmoved. Always, in speaking of the future, she
envisaged Lowther as strong, confident, successful, until by degrees the
image printed itself on his own brain, and the old distrust began to
disappear.

The House opened, a week passed by, and Lowther made no sign of taking
his seat. Lilith remained silent; it seemed the result of accident that
engagements lessened more and more, so that he found himself unoccupied,
sitting in the little flat, listening to the chimes of Big Ben,
following in imagination the doings within the Second Chamber, while
hour by hour, day by day, a mysterious powe